by Ralph Cotton
“Obliged, ma’am,” he said, out of breath. “Best water I’ve tasted in my life.” He wiped a sleeve across his parched lips and passed the canteen off to eager hands.
“How’d you detectives manage to get yourselves dogged so hard out here?” Sam asked, gazing back in the direction of Gun Hill.
“We got ourselves in a tight spot trying to catch up to Curtis Siedell’s train,” Carson said.
“You can’t keep up with a train, Detective,” Stone said, looking the man up and down.
“I know that,” said Carson. “But they captured Siedell at gunpoint. We had to try—not knowing we had gunmen ready to ride us down as soon as we spent out our horses.” He looked back in the direction the riders had fled in. “Bo Anson had this whole thing planned. With us dead, he’d have nobody to stop him”—he looked up at Sam and the sheriffs—“except you three, I reckon. He wasn’t counting on the law getting into this. Railroads deliver their own justice.”
“Not this time,” Sam said. He gave Deluna a nod; she took Stone’s horse string, her own and the string Sam had handed her, and stepped forward and gave the horses to Carson.
“I don’t know what to say,” Carson said, his head lowered a little. “We’ve still got to catch up to Siedell. Knowing Anson, he might cut his throat just for the fun of it.”
“He’s not going to harm Siedell,” Sam said, “not for a while anyway. He didn’t go to all this trouble for nothing. He’ll try to get his hands on Siedell’s money first.”
“I figured that too,” said Carson. “I’m just talking about the worst that can happen, dealing with a man like Anson.”
Sam considered it for a moment. He hadn’t seen Max Bard among the riders galloping away from Gnat’s livery barn on fresh horses. Bard had to be the one who’d split off and followed the train as it sped through town.
“Sheriffs,” he said to both Stone and Deluna, “I’d be obliged if you’ll stay here and help these men back to town.”
“Wait a minute, Ranger,” said Stone, seeing Sam ready to turn the dun back in the direction of Siedell’s train. “Where are you going?”
Sam just gave him a look, as if saying he should know without asking. Deluna sat watching, listening.
“I’ll go,” Stone offered. “I’m back on my game.”
“I know you are, Sheriff,” Sam said. “But we’re a long way from your graze. This is Ranger jurisdiction.”
“You’re pulling jurisdiction on me?” Stone said.
“I’ve seen how you handle that Colt, Sheriff,” Deluna cut in quickly. “Stay here with me, in case these gunmen come back.”
“They won’t be coming back—” Carson said before catching himself. Seeing the look Deluna gave him, he added, “I mean they could, though, any minute.”
Stone looked back and forth between Sam and the woman sheriff.
“I know when I’m being had,” he said, letting out a breath. He gave the Ranger a nod. “Be safe.”
Sam returned the nod. With a touch on the reins, he rode away across the loose sand.
* * *
After escorting the detectives back to Gnat without incident, the two sheriffs liveried their horses and took rooms in an adobe hostel off the main street of town. Sheriff Deluna excused herself after a meal of red beans, goat meat and flatbread, and went off to her room for the night. Stone, left to his own company, retired to his room, but in spite of his fatigue and his efforts to sleep, he found himself leaning on his elbows staring out an open window toward the lights of a cantina.
After a while he realized how badly he wanted a drink—no, needed a drink, he corrected himself. He thought about the Ranger, still out there on the trail, and realized how badly he wished he was out there himself. Out there was real life, law work, he reminded himself. Here . . . ? He gazed all around the empty streets, then around his empty, quiet room. He bit the inside of his dry lip in contemplation.
This was nothing, he told himself scornfully, just a quiet place where old men went to die. He gazed off in the direction of the trail the Ranger had ridden away on. To hell with this.
What seemed like only a moment later, he found himself atop his horse, leaning down from his saddle in the alley behind the cantina, taking three tall bottles of rye from the Mexican he’d sent inside to buy them for him. He gave the old Mexican a small gold coin for his trouble, then reached back and put two bottles in his saddlebags, resting the third in his lap.
“If you need help drinking them,” the Mexican said, nodding at the bottles. He grinned in the darkness.
“Gracias,” Stone said. “Yo voy a beber solo.”
“Ah, you drink alone,” the Mexican translated in his border English. “But perhaps this one time—”
“Cuando bebo me convierto en un lobo,” Stone said, cutting him short. He stared down at the Mexican to make sure he understood.
“A wolf?” the Mexican said, his eyes turning wary as he took a step backward.
“Sí, a wolf,” Stone said with the same flat stare.
“Por favor,” said the old man, raising a hand as he stepped farther way. “Go with God.”
Stone turned his horse and a spare horse beside him and rode out of Gnat at full gallop. The Ranger had a head start on him, but he could close that gap by morning.
Chapter 21
Darkness had set in by the time Bo Anson and his men started leading their valuable prisoner up a thin trail, and it was well after midnight when they made it to the crest of the hill line and followed an even thinner path along a craggy ravine to a secluded mining shack. A three-quarter moon stood centered in a purple starlit sky, guiding their way once they left the lower shadowed hillside. A thousand yards back Ape Boyd and Dan Brody set up the Gatling gun to cover the trail.
At the shack, Anson, Purser, Holt and Sal Jenkins stepped down from their saddles, the first silver-gray hint of morning streaking on the eastern curve of the horizon. Jenkins held the reins to Curtis Siedell’s horse.
“There, King Curtis, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Sal said to Siedell as the handcuffed businessman stepped down from his saddle beside him. “For an ol’ guerrilla rider like yourself, this ride oughta be a walk in the park—”
“Stop goading him, Sal,” said Anson, cutting Jenkins off. “Get yourself inside and build us a cook fire. We could all use some coffee.” He and Holt took down supplies from one of the spare horses as Purser tied the string to a hitch rail.
“Right away, Bo,” said Jenkins. He gave Siedell a shove from behind. “You heard him, King Curtis. Get inside, before I take a sharp stick to you.” His tone sounded like that of a harsh schoolmaster threatening a child.
Siedell stumbled forward in the moonlight to the front porch of the shack and stood beside the closed door waiting for Jenkins to open it for him.
“Ha,” said Jenkins, “your hands are cuffed, but your arms ain’t broke.” He stopped and stood facing Siedell a foot away. “Open the damn door your—”
His words stopped short as Siedell’s cocked knee shot up into his crotch and raised him up on pigeon toes, letting out a pained, gasping squeak. With his hands cupped to his smashed testicles, Jenkins jackknifed at the waist just in time for Siedell to grab his hair with both cuffed hands and slam him headlong into the thick plank door. The impact of skull on pine jarred the entire shack. Dust rose from the timbers.
Jenkins sprang backward off the door, off the porch and onto the hard ground at Anson’s and Holt’s feet. The two looked down at him, Anson shaking his head. He looked up at Siedell, who stood beside the door, which had swung open on its own. Seeing Siedell’s attack as a test, Anson spoke to Holt over his shoulder.
“Gus, cut a finger off,” he ordered Holt as he stepped up onto the porch and faced Siedell.
Siedell bristled but stood silent.
“Cut a finger off?” Holt said as if he hadn’t he
ard Anson correctly. He stepped up onto the porch beside Anson.
Anson stared at Siedell and said to Holt, “Yes, cut one off. Cut another one off every time he tries another stunt like that.”
“You’ve watched this man goad me this whole ride,” Siedell said, nodding toward Sal Jenkins. “I’m your prisoner, but I won’t be mistreated.”
“Holt . . . ?” Anson said.
Holt fumbled at his boot well for his knife. From the dirt Jenkins stumbled forward onto the porch, stiffly bowed in pain.
“Let me . . . do it!” he gasped, a hand still pressed to his crotch, a string of spittle bobbing from his lip. He lurched at Siedell, but Siedell sidestepped him. Jenkins stumbled through the open door; the darkness swallowed him up. The three men stood watching and listening as the hapless gunman crashed and yelped and tumbled about inside the shack.
When the banging sound of metal cookware and the thump and breaking of wooden furnishings settled into silence, Anson raised a finger at Siedell in warning.
“This time I let it go,” he said. “Do anything like that again, I swear I’ll kill you, ransom money or not.”
Siedell stared at him. Anson was right; he had been testing him, seeing where he stood, what he could get by with.
“Then tell your gunnies I won’t be manhandled,” Siedell said.
Anson let out a breath, dismissing the matter.
“Get inside,” he said, gesturing him into the dark shack with his gun barrel. “Let’s see if this idiot’s killed himself.”
As the three walked inside, Holt struck a match and looked around for a lantern. Finding one, he shook it, found it contained oil and lit it. As Holt raised the lantern Jenkins groaned and stood up against the wall, his face and shoulder covered with blood. He staggered forward, wiping a hand over his bloody brow, but he found no sympathy or concern from Anson.
“Get out of here, Sal, before I beat you myself,” he said, giving Jenkins a shove. “You and Jim get down the trail a ways, take cover in the rocks. Max Bard will be coming. When you hear Ape’s Gatling gun, be ready in case Bard gets past it.”
Wiping his face, Jenkins staggered out the door and down onto the ground where Purser stood at the hitch rail looking the spare horses over.
“We’re going back along the trail,” Jenkins mumbled.
“What the hell happened in there?” Purser asked, seeing the gunman’s bloody face. “Sounded like you jumped a bear.”
“I’ll jump his gawdamned bear,” Jenkins cursed in his strained voice. He jerked a rifle from his saddle boot and stomped off along the moonlit trail. Purser shook his head, grabbed his rifle and walked along behind him.
* * *
In the darkness before dawn the Ranger and the copper dun climbed the hill trail. The trail was a narrow black ribbon that meandered along the rugged hillside, appearing in and out of sight slowly before his eyes. He kept the dun moving forward steadily but carefully, knowing that to veer to his right off that black ribbon would send him and the animal plunging to their deaths.
But you know what you’re doing.
He rubbed the dun’s withers with a gloved hand, hearing only the soft clop of hooves in the black-purple silence.
To his advantage he needed no torchlight to keep himself from losing the hoofprints of Max Bard and his partner’s horses. He had spotted Max Bard and the other rider in the last hour of twilight the night before and followed them, knowing they were all headed to the same place. Bard rode with a torch flickering in the darkness, not realizing, or perhaps not caring, that he was seen or being followed.
Sam watched the firelight and kept a hundred yards or more between himself and the two outlaws at all times, knowing how much the sound of a horse’s hooves carried in the still night air. When he lost sight of the torch for a longer than usual time, he stopped the dun and sat as quiet as a ghost, studying the darkness before him and listening for the slightest sound.
Suddenly the sight of rapid gunfire and the rattling explosions of the Gatling gun split the night. The Ranger flung himself from the saddle, grabbed the dun’s reins and hurried off the trail to his left against the stone shelter of the upreaching hillside.
All around him bullets zipped, thumped, ricocheted and splintered pine saplings. But Sam knew the shooting was not directed at him. Someone up there had spotted Bard and the other rider. Whatever reason Bard had for following Anson, Sam didn’t know. Whatever reason Anson had for opening fire on Bard was equally puzzling. But all of that aside, Curtis Siedell was up there—held for ransom, Sam told himself.
He crept forward into the blue-orange gunfire, leading the dun, keeping both himself and the horse against the sheltering stonework while the Gatling gun swept back and forth, spitting out what seemed to be an endless stream of lead and flame.
As he and the dun gained ground up the trail, the big gun stopped as suddenly as it had started. Reloading, Sam told himself. Yet as he and the horse continued moving forward again along the inner wall of the trail, he saw return rifle fire streak in the direction of the Gatling gun from not more than thirty yards in front of him. Bard and the other gunman, he told himself. Taking close note of the rifles’ positions, he turned to the dun and pulled the animal even closer to the stonework than before.
This is as far as you go, he said silently to the copper dun.
He tied the dun’s reins around a stand of rock, rubbed its withers and moved away in the darkness, needing to gain as much ground as he could before the Gatling gun started again. By the time the reload was complete, he’d moved in closer under the fire. He found himself safer up close where the terrain fell away. From there he heard the bullets ping off rock and crackle and thump into pine limbs on the next hillside far back along the trail.
As the big gun swept off to the right, Sam saw the return rifle fire kick up dirt fifteen yards from him. When the rifles fell silent and the Gatling gunfire swept back across the hillside, he lay low to the ground and inched forward as bullets whistled above him.
When the Gatling gun once again stopped to reload, he saw Bard and the other rifleman spring forward in the grainy morning mist, over the rocks and hill foliage toward the Gatling’s position. He also rose from his crouch and bounded along behind them. This time when the two dropped to the ground and he did the same, he heard a voice call out from the trail.
“You and your pard come on up and get yourselves a bellyful of lead, Max,” the deep voice said.
“Don’t worry, Ape,” Bard called back. “I’m coming. I’ll step over your dead carcass on my way to kill Curtis Siedell.”
Ape let out a dark laugh.
“Get to it, Max!” he shouted, his words falling away under the blasts of the big gun as he cranked its handle. Lying flat, Sam searched the upper trail above the gun position and saw the glow of tiny embers racing skyward, skittering in a black swirl of chimney smoke. That was where he would find Curtis Siedell, he told himself as the Gatling gun swept past. That was where he needed to be. He lay poised and ready. When the Gatling gunfire moved away from him, he sprang to his feet in the silver-gray light and raced up through tangles of brush and rock toward the trail leading to the shack.
“There’s that damn Ranger!” Bard said to Trent, seeing Sam’s sombrero, his flapping duster moving away from them up the steep hillside. He raised his rifle toward the Ranger, but then he stopped and held his shot when Sam dropped out of sight among a stand of rock. “I’m not letting him get to Siedell before I do,” he added. Even as the big gun started making another sweep of destruction, Bard sprang to his feet and ran up the steep slope. But on his way, his foot slipped on a loose stone. He lost his footing while all around him bullets streaked past like angry hornets.
“Jesus!” Trent shouted, seeing Bard was in trouble, watching him tumble backward down the hill amid the heavy gunfire. “Stay down, Max. I’m coming!” But Bard wasn’t listening t
o him.
Trent sprang up in a crouch, fired three rapid shots at the big gun, then ran upward and dived into Bard as the addled gunman tried to stagger back onto his feet. Bullets whipped the hillside and whined past them both so close that Trent felt their hot breath as he pinned Bard down.
“My—my rifle . . . ,” Bard said in a failing voice, reaching all around on the ground.
“Forget the rifle!” said Trent, pulling Bard against him. The two tumbled and rolled and slid back down the hill almost to the same spot where they’d started.
Trent, seeing that Bard had struck his head on the rocky ground and knocked himself out cold, grabbed him by both shoulders and dragged him over behind a rock. He could hear Ape Boyd screaming with wild mindless laughter as the gun hammered the rock and the ground all around them.
“To hell with this,” Trent said to Bard, who lay unconscious, blood running down his neck from a large welt on the side of his head. “We’re getting out of here.”
When the heavy firing stopped, Trent mistakenly thought it was time for the Gatling gun to reload. He stood up quickly, holding Bard over his shoulder. But the minute he started to hurry away down the steep hillside, the gun roared to life again. The impact of the bullets hammering the ground at his feet sent Trent and Bard tumbling once again down the hill. Trent let out a yell as they crashed through brush and slid down loose gravel.
“I got them both!” Ape laughed and shouted. “I sent Max Bard straight to hell!” His voice echoed all along the surrounding hills and valleys.
Dan Brody stood tense beside him, trying to listen down the hillside for any signs of life. Ape continued laughing and whooping, the Gatling gun quiet in his hands.
“Jesus, Ape, shut the hell up,” Brody said testily. “All I can hear is your mouth.”
Ape fell silent, but stared sidelong at him.
“You told me to shut up?” he said as if having a hard time believing it.
“Yeah, but I didn’t mean nothing by it,” said Brody. “You were carrying on so, I couldn’t hear what was going on down there.”
